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Baby Seal Hunting

Baby seals are the cutest things ever.

But their cute little heads are bashed in, and they're beaten to death. Their fluffy little newborn bodies are ripped apart. Their undeveloped skulls are sliced open with a metal hackapick and dragged back to the ship, or skinned and their carcases are left to rot. Each spring, about 300,000 baby seals, between 2 and 12 weeks old, are clubbed or shot to death.

Check out this video:

It's such a sad thing that people can actually do something to a creature like this.

Check out Humane Society's Seal Protecting Site and seal hunting on Wikipedia.

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Domain Shopping Spree

I went on a domain shopping spree today, bringing my total domain count to 15.

The domains I currently own are:

1. dan-lev.com
2. dan-lev.net
3. dan-lev.info
4. danlev.name
5. danlev.net
6. danlev.us
7. danl.info
8. danl.name
9. danleveille.com
10. dleveille.com
11. BookMaid.com
12. BookMaid.net
13. TextbooksFor.Us
14. RITBook.com
15. SeniorPhoto.info

See all of Dan's Domains »

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Imagine RIT: Innovation and Creativity

On May 3rd, 2008, RIT is hosting an festival called Imagine RIT: Innovation and Creativity Festival. They plan to attract 30,000 people.

The festival will be a showcase over 150 different exhibits of student and faculty work and innovations at RIT. From space exploration to eye tracking devices to innovative websites. See the full list of exhibit titles.

An exhibit for my website, BookMaid.com has been approved so I will be at the event.

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Self Referencing

Under only very rare circumstances should the web be self referencing.

Self Referencing Links

For example, here are some bad examples:

• Click here to see my website.
• visit this link to go to my website.
• visit dan's portfolio website here: http://www.dan-lev.com.

Instead, use:

• Dan Leveille's Photography and Design Portfolio.
• visit Dan Leveille's Photography and Design Portfolio.
• visit Dan's Portfolio.

Why? If someone has gotten to your website, they obviously know how to use links. You don't need to tell them that it's a link or that you need to click it.

Links should never need to specified that they're clickable. Use standardized styles - different colored or underlined words/phrases are links.

Who cares? Google does, for one. Google reads what the links say, and then classifies those terms with your link. For example, "Please visit Dan Leveille's Photography and Design Portfolio." When Google sees that link, it remember the terms "Dan, Leveille, Photography, Design, Portfolio" that are in reference to www.dan-lev.com. Now when someone searches "Photography potfolio," Google will display www.dan-lev.com a tiny bit higher in the search results. A few links will obviously not make a difference, but keep doing it and you'll see a difference.

This is why searching "failure" on google used to return the White House's biography of George W. Bush as the first result. It's called a Google bomb, because so many people linked the site using the verbiage "failure."

Self Referencing Pages

• Welcome to my website!
• This page outlines the uses of this product.
• Below is a list of links to other blog websites:

Instead, use:

• Dan Leveille's Photography and Design Portfolio
• Product uses:
• Other blogs:

People know they're on a website, or on the "product uses" page.

Never use "Welcome to". People don't need a welcome. Who cares? Google does. The terms in headings are very important in search engine optimization. No one needs a welcoming. What if they go from the contact page to the home page, they get welcomed again. That's uneeded.

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I Hate Windows Vista

That's it. I'm sick of Windows Vista. I've decided that I'm going to upgrade to Windows XP.

The warnings "WARNING: Are you sure you want to change your resolution?" were annoying at first, but now I don't get them anymore. Vista was fine. It looked better than XP, had a nice search, and felt nicer, until I ran into some problems:

• My microphone doesn't work
• Applications constantly stop responding. After waiting a minute or two, they become responsive. SOMETIMES. Other times, they'll crash. It's great when you're typing a long message and haven't saved/sent it.
• Videos don't work - I've had to download so many different codecs and stuff, and some still don't work. Some don't have audio.
• Control Panel dialog boxes sometimes take minutes to response. If I open "Connect to a Network Connection" or other dialog boxes, It will show a blank screen. 3 minutes later, it appears.
• Sometimes the task bar doesn't work and when I click on an item, it doesn't maximize or minimize.
• It won't let me install Adobe Camera RAW

Those are just a fraction of the problems I run into. I'm sick and tired of it. So I'm going to finish backing up my files and then I'm going to uninstall Vista.

Conclusion: Vista sucks.

UPDATE: After posting this blog entry, only seconds before I was about to close Firefox for the last time on vista, I got a "Firefox is not responding" error and it crashed Firefox. Yeah, it's time.

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In other news, Verizon decided that I didn't need cell phone service. So I do not have cell phone service in my home town (or neighboring towns.)

Like this blog? You may also like I Hate Dell.



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Some Rights Reserved

After watching a presentation at my college, Rochester Institute of Technology, by Lawrence Lessig, founder of the Creative Commons, I've decided to license all my artwork under a Creative Commons license.

I've licensed all my artwork (in my gallery) under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

I think that everyone should do this to at least some of their work. It helps people avoid copyright problems and helps promote the sharing of information.

Read more about the Creative Commons on Wikipedia »

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RIT Opening Campus in Dubai

It was just announced today that the Rochester Institute of Technology is opening a campus in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, opening in the fall.

It's going to be called "RIT Dubai" and it's part of the a huge complex in Dubai, called the "Dubai Silicon Oasis". Apparently they're not offering full-time enrollment at RIT Dubai until 2009. They'll be offering electrical engineering, computer engineering, mechanical engineering, finance and service management.

References

http://www.rit.edu/news/?v=45936

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I Hate Dell

So before making my order on a Dell Inspiron 1720, I asked the sales rep, "I'm leaving for college on Aug 18th, will I get it before then?"

"Yes sir, you won't have to worry about receiving it before then."

• ESTIMATED ARRIVAL DATE: 16-20th

Customer Support Part 1:

• ESTIMATED ARRIVAL DATE: 15th

Customer Support Part 2:

• ESTIMATED ARRIVAL DATE: 14th

Customer Support Part 3:

So now it's early morning of the 14th and my laptop is still in production.


Please note their amazing English skills!

Customer Support Part 4:

Customer Support Part 5:

After complaining to Customer Support, the rep. said she would give me a Dell Coupon once I received my order. Yipee! Now I can buy more delayed Dell products!

So the manager says the SAME thing. If I change my color, it won't make a difference because then I'll pretty much be canceling my order and resubmitting it. The manager says that the last customer support rep will call me back tomorrow after she request to expedite it.

Customer Support Part 6:

She called me back and the request to expedite was DENIED. After complaining, I manged to get another courtesy gift.

Customer Support Part 7:

Once again, I went onto the chat after hearing about my delay. I told them I would NEVER buy from Dell every again, nor would my company (yeah... i don't have any employees, but they don't know that). I just made them know how upset I was and how it was drastically effecting my life (which it wasn't really).

Customer Support Part 8:

I went on the Customer Support Chat to complain to them again. Here's a snippet of the chat log:


After that, I talked to her/his manager. I managed to get a request to expedite the order. I got a call the next day and it was DENIED.
Just as I thought, I checked my order status on September 5th, and saw that my order was delayed another week.

Customer Support Part 9:

So I went into the chat once again. Nothing exciting. I'm getting pretty used to this customer support thing. I did get another courtesy gift out of them, and the representative told me to contact sales to see if they could transfer my order over to a local dell store. (see part 10) So I checked my order status the next day and had another delay - I was never notified of this:

Customer Support Part 10:

I talked to sales just like the last customer support rep. told me to. I asked them if they could transfer my order to a local dell store - even though I don't see how that could work. I was right. Sales couldn't do anything. Another waste of my time.

So to sum it up, I waited an extra 5 weeks / 4 delays because of my Espresso Brown casing. Now get this. I pull the laptop out of the box and it's so dark, that the brown is unnoticeable. (Note this image where it's clearly brown.)

Customer Support Part 11:

After two weeks or so of having the laptop, I decide to go claim my 4 "courtesy gifts".

To sum up the 170 lines / 1 hour and 20 minutes of customer support chat: I explained how I was offered these gifts and the representative asked me for case numbers. Now I was only given a case number for the LAST courtesy gift. The other 3 were over the phone, and I was never given a case number, nor did I think I needed one.

He claimed the best he could do was give me a $100 credit. - Even though the total courtesy gifts were: $100 and $50 credit, $50, a "courtesy gift", and a "dell coupon".

After arguing, I decided to go up a level of management and ask for his supervisor. After arguing with him, he told me the same thing. The max limit they could offer me was $100.

I told him I wanted to talk to his manager. He told me the same exact thing. He offered me either $100 or a printer. He claimed that each employee I spoke with was giving me an "offer" and at the end I could choose which offer I wanted. I replied:

I asked to talk to the manager's manager. Now you know your company has problems when a you've gone up 3 levels of management and you ask to talk to someone higher. Apparently it's their strict policy that they can't offer me any more than $100, and no one in Dell could offer me any more.

So that's the end. I was credited $100 and that's all I'm getting.

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My Conclusion

• Dell Customer Support Employees say whatever they can to make customers happy, whether it be a lie or the truth.
• Whenever you're offered something by a company, get a reference number or name.

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The Future of Search Engines

I just discovered the most amazing technology that I guarantee you all will be a search engine standard within a year or two. I was thinking "how can search engines get any better?" Well, since it's been difficult to properly index audio and video files, maybe speech recognition software could index actual content of media files. Interestingly enough, a site called podzinger.com has already developed a technology to index video and audio files, including YouTube videos and podcasts.

This amazing new website allows users to search for text that is actually said in video and audio files. I guarantee Google's been working on something similar for years, in some underground lab, perfecting it for release.

www.podzinger.com
Go check it out. It's crazy.

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RITBook - Textbook Exchange

After 3 month of designing, programming, researching, advertising and dealing with legal issues, I finally finished my newest project, RITBook. It's a textbook trading site exclusively for Rochester Institute of Technology students. From the day it was released, it's been a great success, and I'm really excited about how it's doing. There is now over hundreds of books on the website, and I'm getting lots of positive feedback about the website. Alot of people are really interested in the site, and they're helping me promote it. Hopefully it's going to take off!



I've decided to compile a few tips to starting a website. Hopefully it'll either help people out or just be interesting to read.

The Idea & Brainstorming

• Develop an idea that is unique. If your idea has already been created by other people, is your ability level higher than the competition? Do you have better ideas then the competition?
• Decide on a solid purpose of your site.

The Design

• A beautiful site will attract people. Though functionality is more important, who wants to use a poorly designed site?
• Inspiration. Search for design inspiration. I strongly suggest the following links for inspiration:
• http://nn.veracon.net/
• http://del.icio.us/popular/inspiration
• http://del.icio.us/danlev/inspiration
• Choose a beautiful color scheme. I strongly suggest the following links for color inspiration:
• http://colourlovers.com/
• http://www.colorschemer.com/online.html
• http://www.colorblender.com/
• Stay Simple. You don't want to overwhelm your users.
• Consider your audience.

The Development

• The way I sometimes program is think "Here's my idea, now how do I make it work?" Then you research.
• Bring users around your site. Don't just rely on your menu, add things like "Looking for this? Click here."

The Release

• BETA TESTERS ARE KEY. Before releasing your site, have people beta test it. Have "angry" beta testers try to do everything to "screw up" your site.
• Advertise! Put advertisements everywhere.
• Track where your visitors are coming from. This will show you the best advertising medium.

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Holiday Card Project

A few days before Christmas, I went to The Strong Memorial Health Hospital with my roomate and two friends. We delivered over 100 holiday cards to the patients at the hospital.

The project was part of deviantArt.com's Holiday Card Project where thousands of holiday cards were submitted by artists from around the world. It was a fun project, and it felt great to do something for people who may be having tough times during the holiday season.

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1GB Flash Drive for only $8

I just ordered a 1GB Flash Drive for only $8 - including shipping. How? Well my friend Richard Bushnell showed me this crazy deal!


How does it work?

• First, sign up for Google Checkout. They're doing a promotional offer where you can get $10 off of products from participating stores.
• Once you've signed up, go to buy.com's Kingston 1GB Data Traveler USB 2.0 Flash Drive and click "Add to Cart"
• On the right, click the Google Checkout button.

Everyone go sign up now!

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2007 Cancer Donations

I've decided that this month, I'm going to raise as much money as possible and at the end of the month of January, donate all of it to the American Cancer Society. These donations are going to help fund research programs, education, and services.

Personally, cancer has had an effect on my life, and the lives of my family and friends. If everyone would make any size donation, it will count. As stated by the American Cancer Society states, these donations are leading us toward our ultimate goal - the elimination of cancer.

If you or someone you know has been effected by cancer, or you would just like to help, please consider making a donation.

Donations can be made by credit card, bank account transfer or PayPal using PayPal.com, which is safe & secure and no account is needed. If you are willing to donate in any other method, please Contact Dan and I will do my best to make your donation possible.


I've added a counter to the top left corner of every page on dan-lev.com to display the total donations that have been made.



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Happy Holidays from Dan

I just wanted to wish you all a Happy Holidays!

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